Murder on Brittany Shores

May 16, 2016
Bannalec’s riveting sequel to 2015’s Death in Brittany takes Commissaire Georges Dupin from Concarneau, a town on the Brittany coast, to the Glénan Islands 10 miles offshore. The bodies of three men have washed up on the beach of one of the islands after a strong storm the night before. They all appear to have drowned. The case becomes more complicated when the medical examiner finds traces of strong sedatives in two of the men. The eccentric, methodical Dupin and his team interview a number of well-drawn locals in their effort to identify the victims and ascertain the passions that might have motivated someone to murder them. Commentary on such subjects as tourism, ecology, and commercial development enhance the complex plot, as do vivid descriptions of the terrain (“The long, flat islands floated on the deep opal sea as if by magic, a little blurred, shimmering”). The final twist leaves readers wondering how justice is best served. Bannalec is the pseudonym of German author Jörg Bong.

May 15, 2016
A triple murder opens a new world to Commissaire Georges Dupin of the Concarneau police.Dupin has made a surprisingly comfortable adjustment after being rusticated from Paris to Brittany. His assistant, Nolwenn, has briefed him on local customs, and Girard, owner of the local cafe, provides him with enough entrecote frites to make even the hardest day end pleasantly. Still, nothing he has seen in Finistere--the world's end, as the locals see it--could have prepared him for the Glenan, an archipelago of tiny islets that ride so close to the sea that some are altogether submerged at high tide. The waters are an opal color Dupin has never before seen. The air has a tang like nowhere else. And the lobster at the Quatre Vents is so fresh and delicate it almost makes him forget the lurching ride to the Glenan aboard the police speedboat that's brought him to investigate the deaths of three businessmen: Lucas Lefort, Yannig Konan, and Gregoire Pajot. Dupin doesn't lack for leads. Lefort is so universally despised that even his sister, Muriel, doesn't like him. He and Yannig have been linked to schemes to dive for treasure in the Glenan and open the pristine island chain to ecotourism. They may even have a part in whatever corrupt deals are taking place between the prestigious Institut Marine de Concarneau and the shady pharmaceutical firm Medimare. As the probe continues, Dupin is increasingly confounded. How can a place so idyllic be the home of such evil? Like his debut (Death in Brittany, 2015), the hero's second adventure is judicious in parceling out attention to character, setting, and, most of all, plot.

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June 1, 2016
The second in Bannalec's Brittany police procedural series once again finds the somewhat depressed gourmand Commissaire Georges Dupin pulled away from his caffeine and dining habits into a complicated mystery. Dupin's mood is explained by his exile from Paris to the fishing port of Concarneau in Brittany a few years ago. Dupin misses Paris. The Bretons have a fixed resentment against Parisians. But Dupin warms more and more to the beauties of the Breton peninsula and the history of the region called the End of the World by the Romans. This time Dupin is dragged from his favorite oceanfront cafe by a report of three bodies washed up on an island 10 miles off the coast. Everything points to the deaths as the result of a shipwreck, but Dupin's further investigation reveals forces far more sinister. This is more a paean to Brittany than a mystery, but it's very satisfying all the same, along the lines of Martin Walker's novels set in Dordogne, or M. L. Longworth's Aix-en-Provence mysteries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)